Can Nas Pick Beats? Salaam Remi Answers Once & For All

JLBarrow • January 03, 2017 • No Comments

Grammy Award winning producer Salaam Remi sat down with VLADTV to talk about his recording relationship with Nas. The two collaborated on classics like “Made You Look,” “Thief’s Theme” and “Get Down.” In the interview Remi responds to common criticism that Nas is not that good at picking beats. (I can speak from personal experience of riding around with Nas for a Source magazine cover story in 2004 that he was going through an Alchemist beat CD in a car and skipped over several beats that he would have BODIED.) But Salaam says “He doesn’t give a fuck what you or anyone thinks…” and points out that some of Nasir’s best songs have been created when he doesn’t pay attention to critics. Watch the full interview above.

In other Salaam Remi related news, Questlove revealed in the year-end episode of his Questlove Supreme podcast on Pandora that Salaam would be “cracking the whip” in the studio for the next Roots album. While no one can replace the late great Rich Nichols, the Roots manager and executive producer who passed away in 2014, Remi will provide a necessary objectivity and discipline to the recording process. We can’t wait to hear what comes out of that collaboration.